


midnight is the devil's hour

by placeless



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Insomnia, Philosophical Bullshit, Philosophy, Sad, Smoking, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, insomniac jihoon, jihoon is very sad and very tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11925258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placeless/pseuds/placeless
Summary: jihoon is tired, but he can't sleep





	midnight is the devil's hour

**Author's Note:**

> honestly ... this is more or less an autobiography in the point of view of jihoon ...
> 
> jihoon is legit me right now

insomnia will eat a person whole — feast on the things in their mind they love the most, gnaw on their passions and relationships until all that’s left is a skeleton. then it will swallow the bones.

jihoon stares at the ceiling of his room, mind racing with too many thoughts, too many. his arms shake, his legs, too, but everything feels still. like the world has stopped spinning, the cars moving, the people breathing. everything is still, except for his mind.

soonyoung had asked him why he doesn’t sleep, why he stays in his room all night, typing hysterically on his computer, philosophical bullshit that he’ll look at the next afternoon and think, wow, i’m fucked up. jihoon had answered that he would sleep if he could, but the sleeping pills don’t work, nor does _shut your phone off, read a book, turn off the lights, make sure the temperature’s comfortable, even your breathing._ soonyoung had told him he needs to see a shrink — he hadn’t had the heart to tell him he’s already been to four.

he turns onto his side, stares at the angry red numbers displayed on his alarm clock. three-thirty. one and a half more hours and he can get up, start his day without hansol storming out of his room, hair a mess, yelling at him for making coffee at two in the morning.

he tries counting the minutes. counting from one to sixty, starting back again. it becomes a bore, though, and his mind moves onto other things — why can’t he be the ideal son? why had his mother looked at him with such disappointment, such pain when he had left to go study music? why can’t he be perfect, perfect, _perfect?_

one hour and fifteen minutes.

he tosses and turns, trying to find a position that will lull his brain into a fake sense of security. nothing works. nothing works. nothing works.

getting up, he finds a bottle of water and chugs it, enjoying the feeling of it dropping into his empty stomach — _slosh, slosh, slosh._ he hasn’t eaten in three days. he doesn’t plan on eating for another four.

one hour and ten minutes.

he opens his window, taking a gulp of the cold air, but it doesn’t feel as refreshing as it should. his fingers reach for the pack of cigarettes sitting on his desk, easily pulling one out and bringing it to his lips. the flame from his lighter looks more surreal than it should, and when it goes out he can’t help but feel a bit empty, a bit lost — maybe that flame had been him, had been his soul. maybe he had just put it out.

the cigarette tastes fresher than the air. the tobacco stains his teeth, stains his gums and lungs and he can’t help but think of tenth grade biology. he would sleep through most of class in those days, find the small desk more comfortable than any pillow, but the one class he had stayed awake for had been about smoking. the teacher had pointed at a pair of blackened lungs splayed out on a metal hospital tray, going on and on about how harmful it was, how nobody in the class should ever do it. at the time, jihoon had told his friends he never wanted his lungs to look like that, never wanted to die sitting in a hospital, hair fallen off from chemo and a hole in his throat — now, he doesn’t think that that’s a bad way for everything to end.

one hour.

he paces. it’s almost as bad of a habit as the smoking is. he paces and paces and wonders if the world is one giant labyrinth that he’s trying to navigate his way through. is there someone leaving a trail of golden thread behind him? will he ever find his way back? he doesn’t think he will.

fifty.

the piano keys sound out of tune when he hits them, headphones engulfing his ears. he frowns, trying to play a song, one he’d composed when he was an easily-influenced teenager, when he had kissed a girl and she had told him they couldn’t be a couple and he had thought that that was heartbreak. when he had broken into his parents’ cabinet, taking a bottle of soju and downing it all in under an hour. the song doesn’t sound right.

thirty.

he’s laying on the bed again, staring at the popcorn ceiling with heavy eyelids. he closes his eyes, squeezes them shut and prays for sleep, for any second where his mind is completely at peace, completely at ease. he doesn’t get what he wishes for.

twenty.

he has another cigarette, blowing the smoke in rings, watching them float away in the light breeze. the sun is coming up now, an oil painting in the distance, pinks and yellows peeking over the skyscrapers. a seagull caws, flying past him and he wishes that that could be him — he wishes he had wings so he could fly away, fly off into the mural of the sky, maybe keep flying, up and up until he’s in outer space. his wings would crumple beneath him and his short breaths would stop, his flesh would be sucked off of him like a greedy pig ripping the skin off of a cooked chicken, his bones would float, going on and on, floating into the sun and burning. at least he would be one of the stars then.

ten.

his legs feel numb underneath him as he continues to pace, continues to stare hazily at the alarm clock. the pills work on his body, make him feel lethargic and like he’ll die soon, like this is his last day, tomorrow he will be in a casket — but they don’t work on his mind, which continues ticking like a clock, continues working like a janitor that got the nightshift, mopping floors at three in the morning while listening to the blues and thinking of all the other places he could be.

five.

he sits down on his bed, squeezes his toes together, and then stretches them back out again. his bones feel weak, feel frail and he knows it has to do with the lack of food, the fact that all he does is fill his body with empty liquids, black coffee and green tea and calorie-free energy drinks. he hopes that one day he can flood his mind with all the drinks, can drown his brain in overpriced coffee from overpriced areas of the city.

three, two, one.

he watches blearily as the clock blinks _five o’clock,_ red numbers burning holes in his eyes. he gets up, stretches his legs and opens the door, heart and feet heavy.

another day. another routine. another sleepless night.

**Author's Note:**

> i kind of want to keep this as a one-shot, but another part of me wants to continue and write some parts of jihoon's life, probably feat. jicheol, probably more angst, a lot of heartbreak, a lot of me waxing poetic


End file.
